Overview

The Combined Course on Growth Assessment and Infant and Young Child Feeding Counselling is designed to give health workers the competencies required to carry out growth assessment and effective counselling for breastfeeding and complementary feeding. This course is designed primarily for health workers in primary health care services and for lay counsellors.

Course materials include four manuals (Director's Guide, Facilitator's Guide, Participant's Manual and Guidelines for Follow-up after Training) and PowerPoint slides. The sessions are organized into a 5-day workshop but these may be spread out into partial-day sessions spanning a longer period of in-service training. The course imparts skills for measuring, plotting and interpreting a child’s growth status (to detect undernutrition or overweight/obesity), for assessing breastfeeding and complementary feeding to identify any problems, and for counselling caregivers to promote/reinforce appropriate practices and manage growth or feeding problems.